


We'll head south, just hold my hand now

by Ruta



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: 8x06 speculation, Aftermath, Angst, Difficult Decisions, F/M, Family Dynamics, Feelings, Introspection, Series Finale, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-03-06 01:58:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18841312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruta/pseuds/Ruta
Summary: Jon exhales a sigh that he must have held since the moment he started riding north.Run. Run. Keep on running."I'm sick of death," he blurts out. "I'm sick of war." And sure as fuck he's sick of fire and blood.Sansa's lips touch his temple. "What do you want?" She strokes his hair, her voice is the only noise in the godswood. "Tell me what you want and I'll give it to you."Perhaps it is foolish to believe it can be true. It's foolish to hope.He knows what he wants. He wants calm into his heart. "Peace," he says. "I want peace."(Aftermath 8x05)





	We'll head south, just hold my hand now

**Author's Note:**

> The circle closes. Once a mother failed to love a motherless child. Now that child has become a man and that man has failed to love a woman. He has tried, but you cannot force your heart. Even if you'd like.

Blank and open eyes, leaning back, Bran Stark _sees_. When he returns conscious, he doesn't blink, his voice doesn't betray the slightest emotion. "She did it."  
  
There is no one to welcome his words, only the echo of a deafening silence.  
  
*  
  
This time there is no procession awaiting the haggard ranks of soldiers. (Why should anyone be there? They are not heroes. They are murderers, rapists. Men without honor who have lost their mind.)  
  
The howls of the wind are thunderous, the snow swirls in compact waves of soft whiteness, filling the air with the smell of real winter.  
  
The yard is empty except for one figure. A tall and slim woman, like a sword in the gray midday light, skirts frustrated by the wind, eyes that don't retain any tenderness.  
  
Jon dismounts and goes to meet her. They are one in front of the other. He doesn't even know what to expect, what he wants. For her eyes to lose that sheen of ice, that she opens her arms and welcomes him into the softness of her embrace. For her to show any emotion, no matter which.  
  
Sansa raises a hand and when he understands what she's about to do, it's already late. She slaps him. The blow is strong and resounds in the void that surrounds them like steel against steel.  
  
She doesn't tremble, but her lips are compressed and thin, more than ever like faded scars. Her eyes like glass.  
  
When she turns her back to him, her hair whirls in a restless movement of pure and angry contempt.  
  
Hollow, Jon feels he could cry over the loss. He doesn't even know what he lost exactly, only that it's ripping his chest due to the desire to follow her.  
  
*

 _Kill the boy_ , he remembers the words of Maester Aemon, _and let the man be born_.  
  
"Kill the man," Bran says, eyes as dark and deep as a night without stars, "and let the king be born."  
  
*  
  
He finds her in the crypts. During his absence, Sansa made sure that the dead were removed from the crypts. The bodies of the ancient Kings of Winter, a thousand years of stories of men and women Stark, were burned, their ashes collected in urns and then re-placed under their respective statues.  
  
She's facing the statue of Catelyn Stark and is mumbling an old song like a prayer. Through her voice he hears someone else's voice.  
  
_Soothe the wrath and tame the fury. Stay the swords and stay the arrows. Let them know a better day._  
  
When was the last time he heard her sing? Part of the songs became her prayers as the stories turned into the distorted reflection of things that happened to her.  
  
And yet he feels the lack of it sharply. He didn't think it possible, but he misses that part of her. She liked to dance and knew every existing song. Now?  
  
Her voice fades against the stone walls of the crypts. Once finished, Sansa moves her hands away from her mother's sculpted face. (There are no spoils resting under the statue. What is it like crying someone on an empty grave? Knowing that the body of the woman who gave birth to you lies somewhere, under a bed of grass and water and that you can never kneel down at her feet?)  
  
"Arya was there," Sansa says all of a sudden. She doesn't turn around. Her severe profile is like the smoky shadow of a torch, suffused at the edges, heat ready to disperse. "Did you know?"  
  
"Sansa."  
  
She continues to give him her back, in a statement of absolute rejection.  
  
"When she set fire to the city and burned everything, when our men slaughtered women and children who had surrendered." Usually when she gets angry, she has flared nostrils. Just like now. "While the world was falling apart, Arya was there."  
  
Jon closes his eyes. _Please_ , he wants to beg.  
  
She doesn't seem to notice or maybe she doesn't care. She advances, relentlessly carrying on her sentence and her words hurt more deeply than a dagger could ever do.  
  
"She could have died."  
  
He had expected accusations and recriminations, that she would have shouted at him for his idiocy. This is beyond all expectations. It's worse than any scenario.  
  
"Sansa." A plea. A broken whisper. " _Please_."  
  
"Did you know?"  
  
Of course not. It should be easy to say. He didn't know. It's true. But - _Varys_ , a whisper from the back of his mind. And before him, the Lannister army in the Reach. Randyll and Dickon Tarly.  
  
The signals have always been there. Daenerys. She is -  
  
_No. Not now. Not yet._  
  
Arya, he thinks and the thought of her is a safe haven. He feels like a shipwrecked man amidst the storm. Arya. He wants to see her. He still smells dust and destruction.  
  
"Why didn't she come looking for me?" He asks. After the battle, after the flames have gone out, after the debris stopped shaking under Drogon's fiery roars, after the survivors - a few hundred, crammed together, wailing and dying. Women with ragged skirts. Children with dull eyes, without the strength to cry. Men with hatred in the heart and fear in the eyes.  
  
"She came home to her family," Sansa replies, and at the mention of Arya part of the acrimony fades, making the air breathable between them. "The desire to go home. Can you still feel it? Can you understand it?"  
  
Do you still consider this as your home, that's what she's asking.  
  
Winterfell will always be home to him. His? He's no longer sure.  
  
"Would you have let her do it? What am I saying." Her disappointment is a bitter sight. "You let her do it."  
  
"What choice did I have?"  
  
One thousand. None.  
  
Sansa turns and finally he can see her face. Eyes reddened, mouth distorted. "To do the right thing!"  
  
Anger. Anger is familiar, a safe way of expressing what always remains between them, tacit and unspoken, perceived and never addressed. It breaks the indigestible cold that he didn't know how to handle, the distance they both created.  
  
"Why do you think I was doing it?" He yells at her.  
  
"I don't know," she says and the admission is a violent but quiet blast. "Is it because you love her? Is it because your feelings for her have blinded you to the point of tarnishing your judgment? What other reason can you have?"  
  
_You_ , he thinks. Arya. Bran. Howewer he can't tell her this. It's too late. _Lie. Lie_. "She lost two children. They killed -"  
  
"I lost Lady," she interrupts him abruptly. She seems to be reliving the horror of then, the same dismay, that of those who are fortunate enough not to know suffering before and who the first time felt betrayed, disoriented. "Years have passed and it was my fault. They executed Father before my eyes. They threw Mother's body into a river after having cut her throat. They killed the first unborn child of Robb. They killed his wife and then stuck a dagger in his chest. They desecrated his body sewing his wolf's head on his neck. Theon died protecting our family, our home. Don't talk to me about mourning because our family hasn't known anything else since the beginning of the war. We lost _so much_ ," she whispers and bows her head.

Without realizing it, he reaches out his hands. He wants to touch her and comfort her, but he doesn't know how. He was never a man of words and thoughts, but of facts. If he puts his hands to the sides of her face, what would her reaction be?  
  
"We cannot be slaves of our pain," he hears her say. She stares at her mother. Her eyes are shiny, but her cheeks are dry. "We can't hurt because we've been hurt."  
  
"She just wants to be loved," he finds himself saying. "It's my fault." _Because I was not able to love a woman as she wanted. She's my family, but I'll never love her as I love Arya and Bran, as I love -_  
  
"To be loved, you must give love. You were right. She is not like her father," she says. "She's much worse."  
  
*  
  
Two days later a raven arrives. It is only the first of many, but as the first it triggers a reaction that only time will diminish.  
  
Jon watches the blood drain from Sansa's face, Arya's eyes narrow in return automatically. Bran just stares at him. He hasn't done anything since his return. He stares at him and the words echo like a burn inside him. He knows what they mean.  
  
_Not yet._  
  
"Daenerys invites me to her coronation. She is sending letters to all the Great Houses. Arryn. Martell. Greyjoy. Baratheon."  
  
"You can't go," Arya says, practically snatching the letter from Sansa's hands. Her fingers linger on the corner of the parchment. "You will not go," she repeats more forcefully. "Neither you nor Gendry."  
  
"I don't think refusing is an option. I called it an invitation, but it's actually a summons. She wants us to pledge our allegiances."  
  
"Why you?" Arya asks. "Why can't one of us go?"  
  
Sansa doesn't respond. Jon clenches his fists.  
  
"Arya," she says, her voice soft and calm, resting a hand on her shoulder. On any other occasion Arya would chase away that hand. A lifetime ago she would have found it paternalistic. It would have infuriated her. Not now. The hand, the way Sansa pronounced her name. They clash with what is moving in the back of her eyes, acceptance and sadness and something that looks like regret. No need to add anything else.  
  
"No," Arya replies, widening her eyes and in the fear sue is showing, in her anger she looks terribly young right now.  
  
"You know I have no choice."  
  
"You can refuse!"  
  
"And then?" Sansa frowns. "What do you expect will happen? She will march against the North. She will burn Winterfell."  
  
"If you go, you will die," Bran intervenes.  
  
Sansa stiffens, but doesn't lose her composure. "And if I don't go?"  
  
"You will lose everything you love."  
  
Sansa doesn't blink. The decision was already formed. Jon observes while it becomes part of her. "Then it's decided," she declares.  
  
He can't hear another word.  
  
*  
  
He recognizes her from her steps.  
  
Sansa observes the destruction that surrounds him. Broken branches and sword marks on tree trunks.  
  
Without her saying a word yet, he thrusts his sword into the ground and goes to sit at the foot of the heart tree.  
  
He brings his hands to his face. He is on the edge of an abyss. He's on the Wall and is watching the army of undead led by the Night King. He kneels in the snow and holds Ygritte's still warm body in his arms. Olly looks at him and stabs him. He is at King's Landing and everything is madness.  
  
He hears her approaching. He is not surprised when she sits in front of him and when she surrounds his shoulders with her arms, the gesture feels right and natural. Just like it is to bend his head forward and rest it on her chest.  
  
Jon exhales a sigh that he must have held since the moment he started riding north. _Run. Run. Keep on running._  
  
"I'm sick of death," he blurts out. "I'm sick of war." And sure as fuck he's sick of fire and blood.  
  
Sansa's lips touch his temple. Is it because she thinks they're gonna die soon? Or has she really decided that if these are their last moments, she doesn't want to spend them feeling anger and rancor?  
  
"What do you want?" She strokes his hair, her voice is the only noise in the godswood. "Tell me what you want and I'll give it to you."  
  
Perhaps it is foolish to believe it can be true. It's foolish to hope.  
  
_I promise to be kind from now on. I promise to love you better._  
  
He knows what he wants. He wants calm into his heart. "Peace," he says. "I want peace."  
  
The warmth of her body and the scent he smells imprinted on her skin. The stench of death and ash seems to recede. "So that's what you'll get," she says back. "Nothing less."  
  
They will have to go south. Soon he will have to make an impossible decision. Soon. Not now. Not now.

**Author's Note:**

> We'll head south, just hold my hand now.   
> I feel like I'm casting off my clothes   
> and I'm running through the snow towards the sunset   
> and I'm always with you.  
> "Farewell To The Fairground", White Lies


End file.
